Confidence Classic: How to Train Your Brain for Unlimited Success with John Assaraf

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1:58The internet, full of sketchy offers with sky-high rates and fine print you can barely read. Whether you need help covering payroll, managing cash flow, or investing in growth, you deserve better. That's why I recommend the small business marketplace, Fundera, powered by NerdWallet. It's a free, easy to use platform that lets you compare real financing offers from trusted lenders all in one place. What I like is that you don't need perfect credit to get started. No spam, no bait and switch, just personalized options that fit your business needs. I use this and you should, too. And here's the best part.

2:32For a limited time, when you visit nerdwallet.com slash confidence and fill out the no obligation form, You'll get VIP treatment and talk with a real person who knows all the ins and outs of small business lending. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com slash confidence to find the funding you deserve. Fundera, Inc. NMLS ID number 1240038. There isn't a person alive that's afraid of public speaking. Nobody's afraid of public speaking. They're afraid of what might happen if they speak in public and they're embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, rejected, accepted.

3:17That's what they're actually moving away from. Well, what if I shared with you that in that nanosecond, the chemicals that are released will only last in your body for 90 seconds if you just stay present and focused on releasing the energy, the energy in motion. Think about it. Chemicals are released in your blood. It changes the vibrational field of your body. That's why you say, I feel stressed. I feel anxious. I feel worried. I feel, right? The feeling is our awareness of what's happening in our body. I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow.

4:08I'm ready for my close up. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. I'm so excited for you to see our guest this week because you've met him before. It's been a couple of years and I very rarely have someone on twice, but I'm so excited for you to re-meet John Assereff. He's a world-renowned mindset and small business growth expert who has appeared on numerous shows like Larry King Live, Anderson Cooper, The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

4:46He's built five multi-million dollar companies, written two New York Times bestselling books, and appeared in 12 movies, including The Blockbuster, The Secret, and Quest for Success with Richard Branson. He is passionate in helping people tap into their brain superpowers so they shatter their limitations and achieve their life's biggest goals and dreams. John founded MyNeuroGym.com, which is revolutionizing mindset coaching and mental fitness. His cutting edge inner size app, which I can't wait to get into, helps people rewire their brain for unstoppable success. John's an avid meditator, father, husband who loves to exercise and travel the world.

5:27John, thanks so much for being here with us today. Heather, it's great to be back and you look fabulous. You look fabulous. And I was just saying that to you offline. I was saying, dude, give me your secrets. Tell everybody what you told me. Well, I've been a vegan for 10 years. I've stopped drinking alcohol 15 years ago. I used to be a sugar addict and now I am no longer a sugar addict. So a little bit of clean, healthy living in California and exercising and meditating every day. He's be feeling great at 62. So I'm just looking forward to another 10 or 20 years of, you know, just feeling looking great.

6:04What I love about you, John, and I've been to your home, I've met your wife, like you really are living and breathing the story that you're putting out there online, which I know for me, that is not always the case for everybody. But like, I've seen it firsthand with you. And even just you describing that right now, like you're disciplined, You do the right thing. You do the research. However, when we go back to your younger career, your earlier life, when your kids were little and you're building these businesses, you didn't have this all figured out back then, did you? No. Listen, my parents were like, you know, other parents, not a great diet, a lot of stress, not enough money, disempowering relationship.

6:48so I didn't have really good models to follow. But I always wanted more. I don't know what it was within me, but I wanted more of the good life. Maybe it was, you know, watching television, like kids, you know, today in adults, we look on the internet and we see things that we want. And so I just wanted more. And I got fascinated literally 43 years ago with neuroscience and neuropsychology. I didn't do well in school, but I was really interested in biology and chemistry. And so I just got fascinated with this thing called the brain and our conscious and subconscious mind has been a study of mine now literally 43 years and i discovered that we can all achieve more but it's harder than we think because we don't have the right process not because we can't and very few people were taught the right process to shift, you know, their mindset and to be able to, let's say, let go of disempowering, whether it's thoughts or emotions or habits, which are so hard to break in the absence of the right process.

7:56So I became really good at first using myself as a guinea pig to achieve a little bit of success in each area of my life. But then I started writing about it and teaching people through my books or my coaching. And they started to duplicate the results as well. So I knew that it wasn't about me, but it was really about a process that anybody could follow. So I've just been using it in my own life for many, many years because I want to live an extraordinary life. I don't want to live an ordinary life. And I'm willing to be disciplined enough, which is a little bit interesting because everybody's already disciplined to what they are disciplined to.

8:35So discipline is really a habit. The question is, what are your habits that are easy for you to do? And so I just learned the process to be able to make change a little bit easier. Not easy, but a little bit easier. And so for everyone listening, everyone's like, yeah, of course, we have some habits that we know are holding us back, but it isn't easy. And the things that I've done haven't allowed me to break them. What are some of the strategies that you share that help others make some habit changes? Yeah. So I think first ask yourself this question, were you born with those habits? And anybody who thinks they're going to go, no.

9:17So what is a habit? Like what is a habit? And the answer from a science perspective, a brain science perspective, through. It's an automatic process that has a trigger, a behavior, and a reward. It's an automatic process. So something triggers you to, let's say, wake up and go to the coffee machine, or, you know, wake up and get dressed first, then go to the coffee machine. So we all have these triggers. It could be a sound, it could be a scent, it could be a color, it could be a person, it could be a place, it could be a song, it could be anything, it could be waking up. And then we behave and then we get the reward of that behavior.

9:54And what most people don't understand is they mostly try to change the behavior. And changing the behavior, as much as it sounds really, really great, most of the time it doesn't work long term. And so the question is, if the behavior isn't what I want to change, then what is it that I should be changing? And the answer is the first step is in the awareness of what is triggering that behavior. Because 95 % of everything we think and feel and do, 95 % is automatic, habitual. And so if I can become aware of the trigger, you know, I wake up, I go have a coffee, or I wake up and I get on my phone right away.

10:47What if we can say in between the trigger and the behavior, I can insert something a little bit different. So I'll give you an example. Somebody wants to drink more water. What if we said, okay, so when are you most likely to drink? You know, when I wake up, I go have coffee. Take a glass of water and stick it right by where you make coffee. So trigger, wake up, automatic behavior, go get coffee, but place something that you want to do right at the point of the behavior. So now you're going to get a double reward. So the double reward is water plus coffee activates the reward system in the brain.

11:30You drink the coffee, you feel good, you get more focused. You have a little bit more energy. Boom, boom, boom. We got the reward. So now if I place this thing before the behavior, I can actually move the second part of it if I want to and still get the reward and replace water for coffee. That's just a simple neuroassociative conditioning mechanism that we could use to add a new behavior that's more empowering. Let's say we want to start to exercise and we don't have the habit of exercising. Get your clothes out for exercise, and let's say you're running shoes, place them where you normally get dressed, and put those on first.

12:09And do one minute or even 30 seconds of a new behavior right next to an old behavior that already has the habitual pattern. And all of a sudden, you start to develop this habit of, let's say, putting on your shoes, getting dressed, and maybe doing 15, 20, 30 seconds of stretching. It doesn't matter how small the behavior is. Once we add a new behavior in front of an old behavior, we can replace the old behavior with the new one. So that's, you know, if we want to add something. What if you want to stop, you know, let's say, drinking alcohol? You want to stop eating sugar? You want to stop a behavior or a habit?

12:51Well, the way I stopped sugar, for example, is I knew I had a sweet tooth, and I knew that my brain was craving it. I knew I had a habit for it. And so I said, okay, what can I replace my sweet tooth with? What can I replace it with? So I said, well, you know, I could get some protein, and I could put some fiber with it, which would obviously, you know, expand. And so if my protein had stevia in it, which doesn't spike the insulin in my brain and in my liver, I could replace real, you know, maybe sugary cakes, cookies, ice creams or yogurts, frozen yogurts or vegan frozen yogurts that I like with something healthier.

13:36And so now I'm using a replacement strategy. And then all of a sudden, I'm not having sweets anymore. I've replaced it with a better habit and then I can wean myself off of that as well. So when we're using willpower, it's one of the weakest neural muscles that we can use, especially after three or four o 'clock every day. Why is that? Well, when we wake up, we're born with a certain number of attention units. And so we wake up, we get ready, we get dressed, we go to work, we do our work, you know, in front of our computers, we talk to people, we take care of our kids, our husband, our wife or whatever.

14:13And by time two or three o 'clock goes on, our glucose levels are really, really low. Willpower is tied to glucose in many cases. And our ability to concentrate and focus, okay, is way, way lower after three or four or five o 'clock. In the morning when we wake up, we have higher cortisol levels. So cortisol is like a little bit of rocket fuel. And so when we have cortisol adrenaline, we can go. But then as that cortisol goes down and our focus, you know, gets diminished, it's harder to make the decisions that require willpower, the power to override a natural habit or propensity. So there's a lot of these neuromechanics going on that if we don't understand how it works, like I'll give you an example.

15:01My team knows, do not book me, let's say, on a call with Heather at five o 'clock in the afternoon. I won't be as animated. I won't be as sharp. I won't be as congruent. Because, you know, I wake up at 6.30 and by 9.30, 10, 11 o 'clock, I'm like going. I'm like picking up the speed. So I do all my hardest stuff, the ones that requires my energy, focus, and attention early in the day. That's why I exercise early. It's easier for me because I'm an early morning person to say yes to exercise early in the morning. If you leave me till 4 or 5 o 'clock in the afternoon, I never exercise. If you say to me, you know, meditate in the afternoon, easy, because I'm already like, okay, I'm more chill.

15:45So when we understand a little bit about how our brain circuits, reward circuit, willpower circuit, fear circuit, stress circuit, anxiety circuit, focus circuit, turns on or off, then we can start to manage our mindset a little bit better, manage our emotions, which is really the energy in motion. Is it a high energy emotional arc or a low energy emotional arc? And then that's what drives behavior. And so if I'm in a high emotional energetic arc, I actually want to move towards what it is that I want to achieve. But if I'm in a low emotional arc, I want to move away from it because it requires energy and my brain doesn't want to expend energy.

16:34So those are some of the neuromechanics of what we're dealing with. And I don't want this to be a neuroscience course, but we all have way more control, you know, of what's going on between our ears. And that's really what drives, you know, what we do or don't do. Meet a different guest each week.

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17:38Sign up for a free account to begin managing your business hub with lawyer-drafted operating agreements, bylaws, resolutions, membership certificates, bills of sale, and more, all at no cost. Don't wait. Protect your privacy. Build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit www.northwestregisteredagent.com slash confidencefree and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at www.northwestregisteredagent.com slash confidencefree. Running a small business is tough, and when it's time to get a loan, it can feel impossible to find a lender you actually trust.

18:22Big banks say no. The internet full of sketchy offers with sky high rates and fine print you can barely read. Whether you need help covering payroll, managing cash flow, or investing in growth, you deserve better. That's why I recommend the small business marketplace, Fundera, powered by NerdWallet. It's a free, easy to use platform that lets you compare real financing offers from trusted lenders all in one place. What I like is that you don't need perfect credit to get started. No spam. No bait and switch. which just personalized options that fit your business needs. I use this and you should too.

18:57And here's the best part. For a limited time, when you visit nerdwallet.com slash confidence and fill out the no obligation form, you'll get VIP treatment and talk with a real person who knows all the ins and outs of small business lending. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com slash confidence to find the funding you deserve. Fundera Inc. NMLS ID number 1240038.

19:35I love that you shared the importance or how our brain works around different times of the day. Because when you were talking about working out, if I don't get my workout in the morning and I love working out, it is not happening. I've had situations where work called for me to, you know, there wasn't a window to work out. And I will say to myself repeatedly, you're going to work out tonight. You're going. And for whatever reason, well, now you're explaining why I don't pull the trigger. And I know that about myself. Same when you're talking about time of day and different things that may come up that need our thinking or problem solving.

20:08If my son asked me to find some random thing that he needs to find in the house and it's at 730 at night when he gets home from practice, I never can pull the trigger and figure it out and find it. I'm like, ask me again tomorrow morning at 6.30 a.m. when we wake up. I can find it in three minutes. And he always says, I'm just not asking you to solve big problems anymore, mom, at night, because it truly just doesn't seem possible. And it's helpful to understand, OK, just take a hard pass on that in the future. And let's jump into these hard things when the morning is definitely the time for me.

20:39I'm with you. For you. Now, there's other people who are going to listen or watch this and go, oh, my God, mornings, I'm a basket case. I can't even feed myself in the morning. finding the coffee pot is hard. I used to be married to a wonderful woman who used to believe that if God wanted her to see the sun, he would have it rise at noon. She would stay up till two o 'clock in the morning and she would get more done from 9 p.m. to two o 'clock than she did before noon every day because she didn't want to get out of bed till 10, 11, 12 o 'clock. And her natural cycle for her was that. And we had a, I mean, polar opposite schedules, you know, naturally, and we had to see if it would work.

21:24And it created some challenges in our former relationship. And my wife now, who I've been married to and together with for 20 plus years, is an early riser like I am. She goes from like 630 till 830. I go from about 6 till 10. and we have, you know, the same types of schedules. So it really is important to know your own rhythm and not try to change it if it's hard, right? Like not everybody needs to wake up or can wake up at 5.30, but some people have to and it caused them to be exhausted for the first part of the day. Like most kids shouldn't go to school early in the morning. They should have kids start school at 10 o 'clock in the morning.

22:03I'm all for that. Every day, my son's saying, why did they do this to his mom? I just need a couple more hours of sleep. He's living for the weekends just to sleep in. It makes no sense. Yeah. Well, tell me, you talked a little bit about interrupting habits. One thing that I'm curious about, and I know my listeners are, what about when a habit occurs that maybe like I'm taking a stage and I'm getting nervous, and now that that happened one time, that it starts happening again, and it never used to happen before. Or for anyone listening, that they're suffering from some anxiety that's new, that's popping up, and they don't understand.

22:35How can you interrupt something like that? If anybody's watching us, you're going to see behind me. And if you're listening only, then behind me are two photos up on my wall. Over my right shoulder, there's Albert Einstein. And over my left shoulder, there's Frankenstein's monster. And I want you to imagine that you have a Frankenstein's monster in your mind or in your brain. And you have an Albert Einstein, you know, that has phenomenal imagination and incredible smarts. Well, what happens with the Einstein part of the brain is it can choose what we want. It can imagine a better future. It can imagine, you know, people giving you a high five after you get on stage, you know, or doing anything that might seem a little bit risky, like meeting somebody new at a cocktail party and talking to them.

23:20It doesn't matter. But Frankenstein's monster is another part of the brain that is actually one of the most amazing parts of your brain that you need to learn how to love. and it's your early warning detection mechanism. Now, what is that? Well, imagine you're driving your car and all of a sudden you hear something beeping on your dash. You look around, you realize, oh, to the left of me, there's a car that's really close or to the right or behind me, there's a car that's really close. And the radar picks this up and gives you a signal that there's danger, be aware. Do you love that or do you love that?

23:55Well, of course you love that because it's given you the ability to use a radar, right? to give you an awareness of your surrounding? Or what if you're low on gas and you're on the highway and you're talking to the kids, and all of a sudden a light goes up on your dash saying, stop and go get some gas. You like that, right? Because it's an early warning detection mechanism. Well, this one part of our brain, it's called the right prefrontal cortex and the amygdala is wired. I mean, it is wired from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to give you an early warning whenever there's any real or potential immediate danger or danger coming up that can cause you to get hurt mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, spiritually.

24:47Any real or imagined scenario where, this is so important right here, you might be embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, rejected, unloved, or disappointed. So when you're getting ready to go up on stage, and let's say you've done this a few times, like, you feel confident, right? You know, you know what you're saying, but there's another part of your brain that says, well, what if they don't receive my message the way I want to? What if I forget something? What if, and we usually will place a what-if negative in the subconscious that gives the electrical signal to release the neurochemicals of stress, which is cortisol or epinephrine or adrenaline.

25:31So all of a sudden, our heart starts to beat. We start to narrow our focus and our brains think about all the what-if negative stuff. And then what happens is we focus on that negative possibility that might happen in the future, but we're feeling the neurochemistry of it right now. So I've often said there isn't a person alive that's afraid of public speaking. Nobody's afraid of public speaking. They're afraid of what might happen if they speak in public and they're embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, rejected, accepted. That's what they're actually moving away from. Well, what if I shared with you that in that nanosecond, the chemicals that are released will only last in your body for 90 seconds if you just stay present and focused on releasing the energy, the energy in motion.

26:31Think about it. Chemicals are released in your blood. It changes the vibrational field of your body. That's why you say, I feel stressed. I feel anxious. I feel worried. I feel, right? The feeling is our awareness of what's happening in our body. Well, what we know from a science perspective is that means that the sympathetic is the automatic reactive stress system. The polar opposite of that is the calm to respond system. So how do Navy SEALs get trained to stay calm under pressure or firefighters or astronauts or athletes at the Olympics? How do they learn that in these stressful situations where those neurochemicals are rushing wild, how do they use that neurochemistry as their fuel to succeed?

27:25Well, most people are not aware that if they take, and I call this take six, calm the circuit. And if I take slow, very, very slow, deep breath in through my nose, fill up my diaphragm, fill up my lungs. And then if I take my focus on my lips, and as I'm breathing out, I pretend there's a straw in my mouth. And I breathe it out as slowly as I can. if I do that five or six times, take 60 to 90 seconds at most, we can actually, in an FMRI machine, see the blood flowing away from the part of our brain, that Frankenstein's monster that's got activated because it's worried that you might get emotionally or mentally or physically or financially hurt, it calms down, the circuit switches, and all of a sudden, the Einstein brain comes back online to say, hey, hold on, you've practiced this, you know your stuff, the audience is great, they want you to succeed, I can do this, let's go, and you've just shifted your entire nervous system, your self-talk, and your focus towards what you want versus what might happen that your brain automatically is trying to protect you from it happening.

28:53So these are very, very, very sensitive circuits that get triggered like a light switch on or off. You're walking down the street, you're about to go off the sidewalk, and all of a sudden you hear the tires of a car maybe 30 feet away. And if you jump back on the street, that's automatic because sound travels at the speed of sound. And your subconscious is processing this, And then it's activating neural circuits around cars coming really fast, don't get off of the sidewalk, jump back on the sidewalk before you even had a chance to think about it. These are all subconscious processes that happen beneath our level of moment-by-moment awareness.